The hard.
- Still with the migraines. Apparently cutting out sugar and eating every 2-3 hours is not enough, or maybe it just hasn’t been long enough. I need to cut out something that I had eliminated but added back. Maybe apples and grapes since they have a lot of sugar.

- Partnership taxes. I had no idea doing taxes for a partnership was 12,000 times harder than doing taxes for a sole prop.

The good
+ Taxes are done. I’m getting money back. Relief.

+ Looking forward to reducing my hours at the day job. I’ll actually have time and energy to work on my fiber biz. Yay!
.-= Riin´s last post … Marbles =-.

I’m sorry for all the let-downs and bumps and being misunderstood. Those are all so yucky.
Lots of big love for you for making it through that, you’re so amazing. Selma is, too.

I’m crossing everything I have and using all my big wishing power in hopes that you will get your Space.

And I totally vote for Ironic Deaths and Miscellaneous Shenanigans Department because it’s cool how just one guy can make up an entire department.

This week in Kailand~

The Hard:
~Shoes. From everywhere.
~Getting closer to the Great Migration.
~Dealing with all the Yuck coming up from both.

The Good:
~Still falling in love more.
~I finally got a pink Nintendo DS Lite, whom I named Penelope, and Pokemon Soul Silver. Yay!
~Being excited about migrating for the first time ever despite the Yuck.
~Hearing about the Monster Colouring Book. I so can’t wait to get one. Hooray!

I’m fired up by your fun-brewing. And the fact that it’s called fun-brewing, and that it’s happening. For real.

The hard:
-Not enough sleep.
-Hours of stress at last night’s day job fundraiser (not to be confused with any Havi-made term that includes fun).
-Shoes thrown by coworkers at other coworkers during above event left me feeling icky.
-Currently unable to see time ahead for rejuvenation.

The good:
-The learning that comes from focusing on taking care of myself before anything else has been…mindboggling.
-Have been entirely off antidepressants for FOUR days now, and am still feeling entirely like life is worth living (in fact, feeling as if life is EVEN MORE worth living than it was before). This is nothing short of a miracle.
-The way my lady friend says, “you are not doing this alone”.
-The magic that is actually putting EFT into practice.
-The magic that is prioritizing sleep.
-Reading through past Fluent Self posts for support. It’s been immensely helpful/comforting this week.
-My parents are visiting starting tomorrow and will be here for my birthday. Which means I feel very special and wonderful and excited to see them.

the really hard, and slightly embarassing: bouncing my rent check because somehow, the property management company managed to present it about 6 hours before my direct deposit came through. now i have to go and plead and explain and really ask for this to not go on my record, since i’d like to move out eventually and don’t want a totally non-deliberate mistake to hurt my chances. i have tapped on acupressure points, EFTed my brains out, written lists of things the property manager and i have in common…i’m just dreading 9:00 today.

the hard: leaving home after an amazing vacation and much needed break from teaching. from even thinking about teaching, or myself as a teacher, which almost never happens.

The Hard:
-Procrastination. Big-time. Lots and lots of involved, complex projects, most of which require time on the phone. (Eeek! The Horrors!).
-General crankiness combined with weird bouts of clumsiness. Maybe it’s in the stars. Somehow I managed to fall over the dog, when we were both standing still. I don’t get it. And then the Little Bird fell over him too.
-Warm, then hot. Then cold. Warm warm, cold. Frost. Warm. Is it just me, or has springtime gotten really weird?
-The fear. I haz it. It’s irrational, but it’s there. So there you go.

The Good:
-Altogether, the hard’s not really all that hard. At least I’m recognizing the reasons for the procrastination. Next up: take steps to, um, break it into steps?
-When I fell over the dog, I found my favorite pen I thought I had lost. My pen! My pen! (Any Kids in the Hall fans around here?)
-The Big Project has become the Space-Time Continuum Alteration, and assuming my energy for it remains high, and the husband-person does not thwart it upon his return, it will give me superpowers. Okay, not really, but it will help me have more time for my Things.
-Big understanding about the patience required to get plot done right. Waiting for it and waiting for it…made it more effective. Rewriting to commence shortly.
-I am knitting-obsessed still. I can’t remember the last time I fell in so much love with a thing-to-do. So much simple pleasure.
.-= Emily´s last post … Off the Chart – A Poem, A Dance =-.

I’m going to put the Good first this week. I prefer to end with the Good, but some of the Hard doesn’t make much sense without the context of the good.

Good
+Birthday! Useful birthday money! Gonna get half of a birthday Wii soon! (The other half of the Wii is C’s birthday present)
+My good friend P has a baby!
+Awesome seats at the ball game
+Friends coming over this weekend
+TiVoing the AFI top 100 movies. Fun!

Hard
-Cancellations of awesome birthday plans, and lack of fun surprise presents (Cash from the in-laws, a pre-planned half-a-Wii from the husband, gonna be cash from my parents… That’s a lot of pressure to put on my brother!)
-Further evidence that P and I are drifting. Everything he talks about is baby-related, which a) makes me feel like my stuff is petty, and b) makes me bite my tongue, because he *honestly believed* it would be easy to finish his schoolwork on paternity leave. And it’s not. Which I could have told him the second he announced the pregnancy.
-Ball game was boring, and then we lost.
-The power supply on my laptop stopped working!
-I hate housework, and I hate that my husband is a neat-freak who doesn’t have time to do any housework.
.-= Laura G´s last post … In which I get ready for another year =-.

Havi, hugs for all the bumps and bruises, and for the huge amount of heart, imagination, grit and hard work you’ve put into birthing your beautiful triplets: Shivanauttery Retreat! Playground space! Fun Brewing!

Oh and Monster Coloring Book too.

Hard this week:

- Lots of pain in my body. Back to walking with a cane. Not able to sit or stand for long. Ugh.

Good this week:

+ Working with you on your brilliant launches.
+ The amazing women in my class transforming life-long patterns.
+ Discovering the deeper roots of pain in my body, and feeling the inner shifts taking place.
+ Sunshine. Spring. Yet another offer of a new home to move to in June.

Softness for everyone’s hard this week, and celebrating all of the good with you.

The bad:
This has been my personal week from, well, a really, really bad place. Working all the time (literally), not getting to eat any good-for-me food, and waking up feeling as tired and depressed as I felt when I got in bed the night before.

The Good:
It’s Friday which means that the week from a really, really bad place is OVER (as of 10 pm this evening). Also I get paid today. WOO HOO! And the Pandora Beatles station I made yesterday has not played a single song that I don’t like which makes my work day go by much faster.

My Vote for Fake Band of the Week:
Ironic Deaths and Miscellaneous Shenanigans Department

OH OH – and another good thing is that I ordered my monster coloring book yesterday morning and I have been obsessively checking my email in the hopes that my link will be sitting there waiting for me. I’m so excited!!
.-= supercareo´s last post … Spider Epiphanies =-.

Ironic Deaths and Miscellaneous Shenanigans Department . . . ha! I think that if I ever get around to buying/compiling a file folder to help me organize my life that this will definitely one of the divider names.

Being misuderstood is so sucky. Especially, for example, when you spend 30 minutes crafting a 7 line email for maximum understanding and yet, still, get misunderstood! Ugh. And then you’re like, “Why do I even try to communicate with people! It’s so impossible! I want to live in a cave in the woods.” And then crankiness! :)

The hard.
- Not living in my apartment and not knowing when I can move back and basically everyone just shrugging their shoulders when I ask what is going on
- Lots of anxiety. About everything. Including anxiety about having to go on a mini-vacation thing, which theoretically should not create anxiety.
- People who want me to do something I don’t feel comfortable doing trying to convince me to do it by explaining how my discomfort is unreasonable. Not fun.
- Not sure what direction I should be moving in professionally so not moving in any direction. And knowing that that’s even worse. And still not moving.

The good.
- Talking to my bestest friend who can always say, truthfully, ‘yeah, I get where you’re coming from’ to whatever insanity is currently leaking out of my brain
- Random professional opportunities are presenting themselves that may be lucrative. Ever. So. Slowly.
- Going back to yoga
- Certain people doing their best to be supportive even when my wonderful angelic personality wasn’t presenting itself, to say the least
- Knowing that whatever this is, it too will shift and change into something different. Nothing is permanent.

The hard:
* Insomnia and sinus headaches. Ick!
* Inkjet printer on the fritz. Probably need a new one. Ugh.

The good:
* I wrestled the printer into submission, at least for now.
* I’m exercising again, yay.
* Finished my taxes! And it wasn’t too hard either. Using the same software as last year made it easier.

Good:
* Resigning from my volunteer-position-from-hell is unfolding wonderfully! The president of the organization was tremendously respectful and honoring of my decision and my need to make it, she even said “I hope you truly know the depth of my feelings for you. You stepped up to a very difficult position and have always tried to be honest and forthright. I am very grateful to you for that. My opinion of you remains steadfastly high! Taking care of yourself is never a mistake.” Wow wow wowie wow for that! :D I’m going to wait out the next 2 months until our next annual meeting, to allow for a smoother transition for my replacement, and I’m okay with that. I even think I’m going to get to keep the parts of the position that I do enjoy, as just an ordinary-member-of-the-organization, and just let go of the ones that make my skin crawl and my stomach turn over. Hooray!

* Getting some real wonderful concrete clarity and implementation pieces for my Thing. Still deliberately going very slowly, treating it like the tender (metaphoric) baby it is, but oh man this feels so exciting and juicy and good!

* A 5-month training program for something my-Thing-related, that I’m going to be assisting/co-leading in, starts tomorrow. I’m really excited about that, too, especially as I step up more and more in this context to a position of leadership.

Miscellaneous Shenanigans! I think I need a folder labeled that. So I can put Miscellaneous Shenanigans in it.

This week’s hard:
- Oy with the family drama and general negativity swirling about.
- I have been sooooooo distractible this week. I had a realistic schedule and blew it all to hell with the “Oh, look! Shiny!” whenever I encountered a long-neglected folder that just *had* to be cleaned out right that minute, or, actually, pretty much everything I put my finger on this week.

This week’s good:
- Clarity on a few decisions I’ve been putting off and a path I need to take to make some progress on one of my projects.
- Enjoying a week of unseasonally gorgeous and warm weather and flowers in the garden and leaves poking their noses out and just generally loveliness (I’m pretending it’s not snowing here today). And learning about ramps, and discovering I have a huge patch of them in my woods. Yum!
- A couple of custom orders and fun new editing projects brewing. It’s going to be a busy couple of months, but the systems I’ve been working on mean I can approach it with excitement, not dread.

Oh, Friday. This week’s Friday is determined to not go as planned. But it’s going to be fine…

And personally, The Supreme Quart made me burst out laughing. Love it.

Anyway, this week’s hard:
-Making decisions stresses me out (because anything where I have to be responsible for something affecting other people in any way stresses me out). And I have to make this big one by Thursday. I feel frightened. I feel conflicted. I feel guilt-ed. I feel not capable. I feel very… AUGH.
-I hurt. Everywhere. I don’t know if it’s allergies or just sleeping wrong or what, but I don’t think it’s helping. Ew.

This week’s good:
-I am getting useful opinions from a lot of people (in addition to the less-useful ones, which I’m trying to ignore because they mostly have to do with making me feel guilty).
-A friend has volunteered to spend time talking about this with me over the weekend. Even if it doesn’t help with the decision thing, I’m still happy that I have a friend willing to deal with me even when I’m being very AUGH.
-I have clean laundry. It makes everything better.

1. What feels like the usual these days… not feeling qualified for my “thing”. Not feeling myself for the past few weeks… feeling Stuck and Lost. :(

Our eldest cat is dying. Not unexpected, but it’s going to be drawn out. She has good days and bad days, but is basically in hospice care now. And wants attention constantly.

Finances. I don’t do well with them. Ick. Lots of emotional baggage there. And it’s tax season. ‘Nough said.

The good:

I got new “toys”/sparklies/work tools for my computer. :) Graphics tablet will make design work more fun than it already is, and the ergonomic keyboard will make it more fun to type. About time.

Last week I invested in a comfy nest chair for my studio. Now I’ll have a place to curl up and stitch my models that isn’t in the middle of the living room. I can be a hermit when I want to be! This was a big shift – space for me that’s comfortable and comfortable to work in.

Naomi & Sinclair’s class on money. Help with #3 above. :) Yay!

I had a wonderful experience yesterday wherein I used shivanata to teach a bellydance move. Hmmm. Very useful. And fun. And now I have a choreography idea. Just need to find the right music.

Feeling much more myself this week. Maybe it was all icky leading-up-to-my-birthday ick? ‘Cause after my birthday everything brightened up. And I’m told that there are still birthday plans to come from my loverly husband!

See, I remember when Supreme Quart was cool. He opened for Cream, you know… *ducks and runs*

Ch-ch-ch-ch-chicken…

Hard:
-Our elder cat became suddenly, urgently sick with a bladder infection, and needed immediate attention — on Easter Sunday. Fortunately, there was an emergency 24-hour veterinary clinic not too far away. Unfortunately, that cost about as much as you might fear it would. At least.
-Still stuck in what I’ve come to call prelimbo. (How low can I go?) Still need to work hard to get these academic projects finished, and the real deadline is coming up; they need to be in the faculty’s hands by Wednesday. Which means I mail them Tuesday (overnight delivery) at the latest. I am so sick of working on these things, yet I must press on. The marathon is really getting to me.
-Unsurprisingly, massive sleep deprivation.
-Beginning to get anxious about the preliminary exam defense that’s scheduled for the end of the month. The Little Monster Theater has been staging all sorts of scary worst-case scenarios in my head.

Good:
+It’s spring break this week for the Montessori school where I teach music, which gave me a very helpful couple of mornings off.
+I am being brave and persistent, and I applaud myself for that.
+At the end of a long day, my daughter took me by the hand and led me to a newly flowering tree in our backyard, and showed me how to commune with the fairies she’d encountered there in the blossoms. Oh, and then at the end of a different long day, she showed me a piece of fiction she’d been working on, about vampire politics. She’s been having a peaceful and playful spring break, and while sometimes she and my stay-at-home partner get on each other’s nerves when they spend this much time together, this time it’s been smooth sailing. Joy and relief!
+My voice is slowly and steadily recovering from my recent illness, growing stronger day by day. And so, I hope, am I.

Oh, this week…
The hard:
- there’s so much I want to do, and so little fits in my days…

The bittersweet:
- deciding at the very last minute (like, I was at the bus terminal, credit card in hand to buy my ticket) to not accompany my gentleman friend on a two-day trip, missing out on the fun of seeing some friends – hard, but I appreciate the extra time that gives me.

The good:
- getting a bunch of storytellers interested in learning Dance of Shiva!
- Elizabeth the H! She’s always all kinds of awesome, but I was the happy recipient of a gigantic bunch of awesomeness from her this week. I’m stoked! :)
- Punk Rock Shivanauttery!
- oh, and we’ve just learned that my gentleman is finalist for a literary award for his latest book. Yay!
.-= Josiane´s last post … Middle of the night musings =-.

The hard:
- Husband left this morning for India where he will work for 5 weeks.
- It will be a month and 6 days until I can join him.
- Not enough sleep.
- Too many things planned for the coming weekend.

The good:
- I will travel to India and join my husband even though I have to wait another months and 6 days.
- Finished a job I had been procrastinating.
- Making yummy Vietnamese rice paper rolls, lots of them, to share with my cousin and her husband.

I’ve got to go with the majority this time, Ironic Deaths and Miscellaneous Shenanigans Department just sounds awesome.

I’ve gotten out of the habit of doing the check-ins, so, here’s to getting back into it…

The Hard
- Last week’s flu meant a week of catch-up and belatedness this week that’s still only mostly taken care of.
- So far only one person wants their Monster drawn, sigh, which means I’ll likely have to settle for just the coloring book and not the extra stuckification.
- Feeling in need of some direction and not sure how to find it or who to ask.
- Fallen behind in my marketing enough that this spring has the potential to suck if I don’t get a few more clients in the pipeline.
- Wrenched my neck nearly 2 weeks ago and am still having pain and stiffness. Bah.
- Having some Impostor Fear.
- Still feeling busy busy overwhelmed and also busy like a busy person, but, have managed to mitigate that somewhat.

The Good
+ The weather is gorgeous! Sunny and warm and perfect.
+ The flu is gone, and it did give me an opportunity to take a lot of naps, which led me to buy new pillows when some inexpensive-but-good-quality ones came across my path.
+ I did get one person to pay for a Monster, so, I can get the Monster Coloring Book.
+ My email is cleaned out and all of the time-sensitive stuff that was late is now done.
+ My clients are mostly happy with me right now! Yay! Now if only that meant I had money in the bank…
+ Taxes owed are much much less than last year, and I have a decent quarterly payment saved up for this year.
+ Just got a nice compliment from a client-of-a-client whom I had been helping out with using the client’s site.
+ Went to the Naomi Money Call last night and am hopeful. Monsters are setting up a clamor but I think that’s a good sign, actually!
+ Kittehs are warm and loving and happy and healthy, and getting a kick out of all the birds and sunshine and fresh air (through the windows and screens, anyway).
+ I chickened!
.-= Amy Crook´s last post … Monster, Monster? =-.

@Rinn – oh yes, partnership returns are just a “blast”. I’m a CPA but I don’t practice much anymore. 1065′s were my least favorite return to do. Especially when the partner’s ownership percentages kept changing each year.

The Hard:
- I’ve truly found something worse than the combination of tax season AND the serious illness of my father (circa 2001). It is called the combination of working 40+ hours, teaching adjunct (all lecture + no lab = endless prep) AND being in a doctoral program which is experiencing some serious disorganization with the current 6-week class. WTF? has become the new motto of my small group.
- Not nearly enough sleep to offset the anxiety this current class is generating. And not enough time to exercise it away either.

The Good:
- Classmates with a sense of humor. Much time was spent today talking each other off the ledge.
- My best friend who is loaning me her digital videocamera when I discovered late last night that I have to do an interview and turn it in 2 weeks from today. WTF?
- My student worker who will pick up the digital camera as my friend lives far away from me but works near where my student lives. Thank goodness I had the sense to ask for help for a change.
- My husband who has accepted that his wife will be grumpy and sleep deprived for many months to come.
- Our cats who make getting out of bed in the morning all worth it. The skittish older cat is becoming a little less skittish with every week that goes by. Her crazy younger side-kick is constantly finding new ways to amuse herself and us! Silly Kitties!

Oh my, I haven’t been here in so long, and I come and there are MONSTERS which is so cool. And chickens which reminded me that it’s Friday and maybe, just maybe, it would be ok to start writing these things again? Oh dear Havi, I loves yous.

Good!:

I’ve been writing at 750words.com and it’s great because it has STATS. And that’s good because I am a NERD.

I’m so glad candlelighting is at a nice slow 7:30 now instead of the rushrushrush-inducing not-even-4:30-yet like in the middle of winter. And I have pretty handpainted candles to light this week. Loving everything from Aloha Bay that I can light with a match.

Hard:

Bicoastal marriage sucks. And all my stuff is (still!) in Florida so I’m sitting on the floor as I write this because I miss my armchair. It has been an uncivilized number of months now.
.-= Shannon´s last post … Ask the Astrologer! =-.

Another vote for Ironic Deaths and Miscellaneous Shenanigans Department.

Hard:
-Only 3 hours’ sleep before my fligh. Urgh.
-Migraine last night. Bad. Urgh.
-Having to be “on” on a panel discussion (that was streaming live over the internet) on the business of calligraphy *while* I had a migraine. Urgh.
-Lots of planes, trains and automobiles; feeling uprooted and unglued.

Good:
-Travel! I love travel!
-Train ride! I love train rides!
-Being part of a panel discussion (that was streamed live over the internet) on the business of calligraphy! Fun!
-Seeing my 6 1/2 month old nephew and my brother! Yay!
-Didn’t let my money monsters stop me from taking a big step I was excited about.
-Meeting cool new people and being treated like a queen and honored guest while teaching in NY.
-Meeting another artist last night who does what I do (!) and has figured some things out that I’m only just on the verge of figuring out, and who is excited about learning from me the things that I’ve figured out that she’s just on the verge of figuring out. A compadre!

And my class today was SO MUCH FUN, and the students seemed to REALLY LIKE IT! Yay!

I can chicken on a Sunday, a Sunday, a Sunday, I’ll get my chicken on…

Hugs for everyone’s hards, cheers for the goods. :)

Yay for FunBrewing and Monster Coloring!

And I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only fan of The Supreme Quart :)

Week April 4-10

Hard:

Birthday drama. This year I had accepted that hey, I had to make my own fun, and of course then someone was available, but we spent the day running art to Columbus. No cake, no cards, no effort on someone’s part to even acknowledge that it was a special day. The Birthday Queen was not amused.

Not feeling the creativity this week.

100 acre brush fire in Nelsonville shut down the main highway out of town on Tuesday.

Good:
Lots of wonderful birthday wishes from Facebook peeps

I emailed someone who had extended “anything I can ever do to help you, let me know” offer and am going to be showing/delivering art to her gallery later this week.

The brush fire was contained and no one was hurt. Road was opened back up for our trip Wednesday.

Monster Coloring book ordered! :D

Purging the studio while waiting for the muse to return, now I have more space to make stuff. Coincidentally I also heard from the show in May, and have 4-5 new pieces to create too.

And of course the most good good of all, we attended my cousin’s wedding yesterday, and tons of cousins I haven’t seen in years, some in decades, were able to come. Such a beautiful ceremony and so healing to spend time with them all.
.-= Andi´s last post … Wishcasting Wednesday =-.

The ProcrastinationDissolve-o-Matic

Monster Manual and Coloring Book

Even when we know they’re just being horrid because it’s the only way they know to keep us safe, it still sucks when your monsters are around. The Monster Manual tells you exactly what to say so they will stop bugging you.

Rally! Rally Rally!

Events at which you get crazy amounts of stuff done in a short period of time, with support, love, hilarity and massive destuckification. Find upcoming Rallies here!